Psychiatry Notes: February 2017

Editors' picks for recent stories in mental health, including Executive orders and "Islamophobia,” effect of parental obesity on childhood development, personality, and global mental health. Scroll through the slides for links to detailed reports.

Community Mental Health Care: “The deinstitutionalization of people with mental illness restored their rights, but caused plenty of problems as well . . . According to recent surveys, the number of state psychiatric beds has fallen from over 550,000 in 1955 to fewer than 38,000 in 2016. Meanwhile, research conducted by the Treatment Advocacy Center estimates over 355,000 inmates in America’s prisons and jails suffered from severe mental illness in 2012. Last year, a report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that over 100,000 Americans who experienced homelessness also suffered from severe mental illness.” (Scientific American, January 24, 2017)

Parental Obesity and Childhood Development: In an article that appeared in Pediatrics, Edwina Yeung and colleagues noted that parental obesity is linked to delays in child development: The investigators found that “children of obese mothers were more likely to fail tests of fine motor skill—the ability to control movement of small muscles, such as those in the fingers and hands. Children of obese fathers were more likely to fail measures of social competence, and those born to extremely obese couples also were more likely to fail tests of problem solving ability.” (National Institutes of Health, January 3, 2017)

Commander in Chief?“When mental health experts look at Trump from afar they see anger, narcissism, and compulsive behavior.” Further, Allen Frances, MD, writes, "Trump doesn't meet DSM criteria for any mental disorder . . . I wrote the [DSM] criteria and should know how they are meant to be applied: Personality disorder requires the presence of clinically significant distress and/or impairment. The armchair, amateur diagnosticians seem either to be unaware of this requirement, or carelessly choose to ignore it.“ (Business Insider, January 31, 2017)

Islamophobia? President Trump’s orders initiated in January pose harm to refugees, immigrants, academic research, and international exchange, according to psychologists at the American Psychological Association. In a related post, Immigration, Islamophobia, and Psychiatry, Steve Moffic, MD, writes about the topic, not from a political view, but to find solutions to solving problems surrounding Muslims from a psychiatric point of view. He writes, “Given that one of the special interests in my career was cultural psychiatry, I have had exposure to Muslims for decades in my work. I developed a model of a cultural psychiatry educational seminar series, based on discussing our own cultural and religious identities. Despite a strong stigma against mental illness in many Muslim circles, I treated psychiatric illness in Muslims from Somalia, the Middle East, and Black-American converts.” (American Psychological Association, February 1, 2017)

Parental Obesity in Childhood Development: In an article that appeared in Pediatrics, Yeung and colleagues noted that parental obesity is linked to delays in child development: The investigators found that “children of obese mothers were more likely to fail tests of fine motor skill—the ability to control movement of small muscles, such as those in the fingers and hands. Children of obese fathers were more likely to fail measures of social competence, and those born to extremely obese couples also were more likely to fail tests of problem solving ability.” (National Institutes of Health, January 3, 2017)